Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Since mid-June 80 participants are learning about exponential technologies. The group is not just diverse in terms of languages, or places of origin (from Germany to Italy, Israel, Brazil, and others) but also their educational, and work background. From PhD students to serial entrepreneurs all can be found.

What bounds them together is the PASSION to apply exponential technologies to address humanity's GREAT CHALLENGES.

The place where all this happens is far away for most of us, in Silicon Valley, at NASA Ames Research Center (NASA research outreaches right where new technologies are applied early on in their development), founded in 2008 by philanthropist Peter H. Diamandis, and inventor & futurist Ray Kurzweil.

Question stays, " Can we participate even though we haven't paid $25K+, and are not amongst the 80 lucky ones?"

Five years, and four applications for the Graduate Studies Program later there appeared, more by serendipity than planned search, an opportunity to bring the insightful Twitter conversations from Sinuglarity University to a broader public. A year ago, Angela Incampo and myself got invited to become the social media team for the 26th International Cartographic Conference by the main organizer, Prof. Manfred Buchroithner. As conference proceeded, and the hashtag #iccDD2013 circled in the networks, we became aware of an event entry on Eventifier, a social media news aggregator and a startup themselves.

With the start of this year's #GSP14 the question arose, "Can we crowdfund the Basic Version of Eventifier to enable a possible future conversation with interested stakeholders who'd be interested to help to establish something similar as Singularity University in Silicon Saxony?"

Certainly a project well under the "waterline" of any serious investor, $99 sounding like everybody could pay it personally not needing a crowd (actually these were some of the comments I received from foreign, and local contacts who are active in entrepreneurship, and technology).

It started small with an initial post on this GSP-dedicated blog, now the first level ($99) has been reached with some overshooting funds.

Next level you can read about HERE, and with an achievable goal for #GSP15.